~ Enjoy Oregon

Tag Archives: fishing

North Coast Boat Launch Facilities

Boating is a popular form outdoor recreation in the Pacific Northwest, whether going out for some fishing and crabbing or just to enjoy the sites, boat ramps along the coast are well used.

The following boat launch facilities will put in you in the area to catch fish and crabs whether you are fishing the infamous Bouy 10 area of the Columbia river estuary or adventuring in the Bays from Nehalem, Tillamook, and Nestucca, the large bays in the North Coast offer tremendously healthy fisheries. If you like to just go for a boat ride and look at the native wildlife swimming around in the water and flying above then these locations will also serve your need of finding a place to enjoy the wildlife of the Oregon Coast.

The Warrenton marina is a popular boat launch location near the popular Buoy 10 fishery on the Columbia. The salmon fishing is some of the best in the area with the most popular time of year being in August.

The Johns Day Ramp on the Columbia River near Astoria is a place to launch your boat and have access to the incredible fishery of the Columbia. Regardless of what you are going after this can be a good place to drop your boat into the water and go enjoy the river.

The Nehalem Landing County Boat Launch is perfect for launching into the Nehalem river / bay right near the city of Nehalem this launch is well maintained and cleaned by the Tillamook County and is great facility for the area.

The Nehalem Bay state park is a nice option on the ocean side of the bay. The park iteself is a popular place to hang out with the family and has lots of camping options and a great beach.

Launch right near the mouth of the pacific on Nehalem Bay at the Jetty Fishery Mariana and RV Park. This is a good place to take the kids if you are looking to expose them to crabbing and the bay wildlife, but do not have a boat, there are rentals and other accommodations on site.

Port of Garibaldi has a large marina area adjacent and if you are looking for a place to moor a large fishing boat then this is the spot. Regular guided fishing and crabbing trips operate out of the Port of Garibaldi and if you are looking for a chance of pursuing fish out in the Pacific ocean a summer time Tuna or Rockfish trip can be a lot of fun with the large charter boats operating from the Port of Garibaldi.

Sollie Smith is a great Wilson River boat launch located just off Wilson River Loop. The Wilson river is a well known salmon and steel head fishery and fishing from a drift boat is one of the best ways to target these fish. Boaters use this ramp as both a put in and pull out location depending on the stretch of river that they are fishing.

Mills Bridge is another drift boat launch location on the Wilson River that many boaters use to start there drift to pursue the fish in the river.

Memaloose Point Boat Launch is a county run boat ramp that is on the other side of the Tillamook bay from the Port of Garibaldi. This launch ramp is great for accessing other fishing holes in Tillamook bay and is easy to reach just being outside the town of Tillamook.

Netarts Bay Marina is available for putting your boat into Netarts bay. People enjoy crabbing in Netarts bay and due to being a tad further than Tillamook locations can be a little less busy when lots of people are at the coast from the Portland area.

Little Nestucca Boat Launch is at the mouth of the Little Nestucca into the Nestucca Bay. This area receives a substantial run of Salmon and some steel head as well and so is a favorite destination for many angers along the Oregon Coast.

The Nehalem state park is located just north of the Nehalem jetty where the river enters the Pacific Ocean. To access the state park you need to turn off highway 101 just outside of the town of Nehalem before reaching Manzanita. The state park is a day use fee park, so everyone that parks a car in the lot is required to pay the $5 fee unless you have a state park permit.

The best feature of the park is the massive number beach access points. Unlike other sections of the Oregon there is no homes built out onto the Nehalem spit and so the views from the sand dunes hiking into the beach are really impressive. The line between the Oregon coast forest and the Oregon sandy beaches is so defined here, it is really impressive.

The park is home to several facilities for people that like to horseback ride can use. Including large number of trails and stalls for stable a horse for a temporary time during the day.

This specific state park also has a 2 lane boat ramp and is a nice alternative to the public county ramp located further up the river or the often overcrowded private ramps located right next to the mouth of the bay. Nehalem Bay is well known for its spring and fall runs of salmon and exceptional crabbing at certain times of year. The bay is also loaded with several species of clams that can be harvested during the low tides. The mud flats that line the shores of the bay side of the state park are perfect places to go for a dig. Cockles, Gapers, and Purple Varnish are the most plentiful ones that most people find.

This park gets a lot of seasonal use so expect to not be alone during the peak season or during really nice weather days on the weekend year round.

Remember to get your day use permit, the park is regularly patrolled by the local law enforcement. Here is a list of all the park fees on the Oregon State Parks and Recreation Website: Nehalem Bay State Park fees

Looking for a great place on the Oregon Coast for a camping trip, this might be the right destination for your family. The huge beach is an amazing playground for summer fun and the bay side offers opportunities for clamming, crabbing, boating and fishing. There is something for everyone that likes the Oregon Coast outdoors at the Nehalem Bay State Park. This park even has a primitive airport camp something not found in the other large camping sites nearby.

The Oregon Pacific Halibut fishery is always an anticipated angling opportunity by many residents. This is spring time ocean fishing so there will be some good weeks and there will be some days that are pretty wild condition wise. Check out the schedule and dates below, depending on what port you are leaving out of there will always be a few amazing days each season for offshore and inshore halibut fishing.

Always make sure and check the current regulations for any changes as the season will be called early if anglers catch their allotted limit early in the season. The 2014 season has been given a catch limit of .96 million pounds, down slightly from the 2013 Season.

Columbia River subarea. (1) The all-depth halibut fishery will be open four days a week, Thursday through Sunday, for both the spring and summer seasons. (2) A new nearshore (incidental) fishery with 1,000 pounds or 10% of the Columbia River subarea allocation, whichever is less, will be open inside the 40-fathom line (defined by waypoints) beginning on Monday, May 5, 2014, on days when the all-depth halibut fishery is closed.

Central Coast subarea. The nearshore halibut fishery will open on July 1, seven days a week.

South of Humbug Mountain subarea. A new Southern Oregon subarea (Humbug Mountain to the OR/CA border) was created with 2% of the Oregon sport allocation and an opening date of May 1; open seven days a week.

Make sure to have your fishing license and proper tag to take a legal halibut. The popular method is to use baits including large herring, shad, tuna belly, salmon belly, and other concoctions of bait with a heavy sinker. If you have never fished for halibut off the Oregon coast the offshore fishery in places like halibut hill out of Garibaldi are over 800 feet deep. You will be using a very heavy weight and doing a lot of reeling. But grilling a halibut on the BBQ or grilling some amazing fish tacos makes it all worth it.

Dory days is a long standing tradition in the summer in Pacific City. This weekend is a celebration of hardworking fisherman that handled the dory boats of the coast going offshore in simple wooden dory’s and catching fish from the city and returning to the beach.

If you have never seen a dory launch into the ocean from the sandy beach head on out to Pacific City this weekend and watch them live in person. These boats are fun to watch launch and come back ashore.

The albacore tuna fishery of the pacific northwest is a special deal that provides anglers the opportunity to hook into these fast swimming hard fighting fish in good numbers all within the a reasonable distance for the sport fishing boats. The ports up and down the coast from Ilwaco across the boarder in Washington down to Southern Oregon are called home by the tuna fleet. Tuna begin to show up in very limited numbers near the end of June beginning of July and will be caught through the summer into the fall. Albacore can be caught in a variety of ways, most anglers will troll a combination of different lures such as cedar plugs, clones, diving baits like Rapala X-Raps, and swimbaits. After finding the fish on the troll, getting a bait stop going by chumming with anchovies can keep the school of fish close by that it is possible to then catch more fish on live bait, large iron baits similar to spoons, and casting lures like swimbaits. It is possible to get into large numbers of fish and catch many fish from a single stop and it is this lights out fishing that makes fishing for TUNA! so much fun.

There are many excellent tuna fishing charters available for scheduling trips if you are looking for someone to teach you how to fish offshore.

Keep tabs on how the fishing season is progressing by checking on the salty dogs forum. Learn more about catching these fish from anglers that have been fishing the salt for years.

2013 brings a new adjustment to the regulations regarding tuna fishing and how anglers can prepare their catch prior to landing. It is possible to partially cark the tuna in order to reduce some of the fish remains that need to be retained. Anglers with smaller boats with less space for holding fish catches will be able to gain room in their fish holds. If you plan on partially carking fish at sea make sure you read the full details here so you do not get in trouble with breaking the fishing regulations.

The Oregon Tuna Classic will be held this year in two locations: Ilwaco on July 26 and 27 and Garibaldi on August 16 and 17. All of the details about these excellent fishing tournaments can be found on the official website: http://www.oregontunaclassic.org/

Halibut fishing has been one of the most rewarding and productive types of fishing in the North Pacific. Most of the time, it serves as a race and a form of entertainment to the anglers involved seeing who can get fish in the box the fastest. First to gain the most number of pounds in a limited given time wins. Although there are certain rules that they should follow such as not catching any halibut below 30 inches or 76 cm. One of the problems faced by fisherman is the weather. When the weather is bad, it becomes dangerous to go to sea.

izik, CC-BY, Via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/izik/220648048/

In Oregon, the fishing trip would generally take about 12 hours and a limit of one halibut per person with no length limit is given. However, this type of fishing is not recommended for children below 12 years old, because this giant flatfish has great strength and it is very difficult to bring in a huge 70 to 100 pound fish.

This kind of fishing is said to be so much fun due to the challenge of catching the big and heavy fish and being able to put it on deck. It is hard to find another fish that fights like a halibut. This fish tends to push and pull back and forth making the catch feel like you are dragging more than what you are getting.
According to The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, they will be deciding the fishing seasons in Salem on the 26th of April. The proposed dates are from the Department of Fish and Wildlife staff and the Pacific Halibut Commission.

Below are the dates for the seasons for Halibut fishing:
May 9-11, May 16-18, May 30, June 1, June 6-8 (All-depth seasons along the central Oregon coast as recommended by the staff.)
June 20-22, July 4-6, July 18-20 (Back up weekends)
August 2 and 3 then every other Friday and Saturday (Summer all-depth)
May 3 and every other Friday to Sunday (when the area of the mouth of the Columbia River opens)
August 2 (Summer season)
If there would be in season changes to open dates, they will be announced on the NMFS Hotline (1-800-662-9825; #5; #1) and posted at www.dfw.state.or.us/MRP/
Give Garibaldi Charters or JB and Water Sportfishing a call, if you are looking to go out for these bottom dwelling fish out at Halibut hill around 20 miles past the Tillamook Bay bar near the Garibaldi marina.
Find Oregon fishing guides here.

Here is what it is like to go fishing on a charter for Pacific Butts off the Oregon Coast.

The Ghost Hole is a very popular salmon fishing location on Tillamook Bay. Located right near the Oregon Coast 101 Highway in between the towns of Bay City and Garibaldi. It is only accessible via the water and while there is a large turn out and bay viewpoint with parking access, it is not fishable from shore due to the long distance required to cast from shore to reach the productive water and the number of boats that will be trolling nearby when the fish are running. The most popular methods for fishing the Ghost Hole are trolling cut plug herring and trolling large spinners. The typical weight used by most anglers in the Ghost Hole area is between 4 and 8oz due to the relative shallow nature of this spot on the bay and the strong tides that are often present throughout Tillamook Bay. When the fish are in the bay you are likely to see anywhere between a dozen or so boats on a rainy day to well over a hundred on a sunny weekend day fishing the area. You can get to this location by launching a boat from the Garibaldi marina and fish can be found anywhere between the large rocky point where the road turns up towards the Miami River and all the way out to Bay City, with the most productive areas being within eyesight of the floating bathrooms.

Here is the Ghost Hole Location and below is a map with the main channel outlined. When fishing the area just get in line with the other trollers and observe the boat traffic, it is much better to try and conform to the pattern of boats versus going against the grain and upsetting other boaters. This is not a place to drop anchor and fish you will want to be trolling otherwise you will quickly upset others that are also trying to enjoy the salmon fishery of Tillamook Bay.